


our hearts are wrong

by flwrpotts



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Discussion of Major Character Death, Gen, Grief, Post Season 1, angst angst!, pope/kiara/jj if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25177150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flwrpotts/pseuds/flwrpotts
Summary: kiara thinks it’s probably somewhat sacrilegious for them to be holed up in john b’s house, but it’s not as if there’s anywhere else for them to go. besides, the four of them spent so much time in this place over the years that it’s as familiar to her as her childhood bedroom, every squeak in the floorboard and pile of clutter worn easy into the grooves of her memory.in some perverse way it only seems fair for them to come here now that everything else has fallen apart. at least there’s this: a house with beer in the fridge and saltwater stained books, motheaten comforters to curl up in when the storm nights get cold. a place that remains steady when everything else has gone off the cliff.
Relationships: JJ & Kiara & Pope
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	our hearts are wrong

**Author's Note:**

> watched the season 1 finale with a glass of wine and THIS happened. this was written in an hour and not proofread, so any errors are entirely mine (and pinot grigio's) fault. slightly canon divergence- in this, the parents didn't arrive after the boat sank. technically platonic but can def be read as pope/kiara/jj. depending, i really want to write an in-depth threeway fic for them during the period they think sarah and John b died. 
> 
> title from "our hearts are wrong" by jessica lea mayfield.

“What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident, but we share it. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.”

\- cat's eye, margaret atwood

i. fifteen minutes after 

shockingly enough, it’s jj that has the steadiest hands to drive. the three of them are soaking wet and shivering, huddled together under the shock blankets like castaways. the sheriff doesn’t have the heart to question them under the circumstances, and so while he’s off calling their parents they slip off into the nighttime, staggering under the weight of what’s happened. 

“i can’t go home right now,” pope says, numbed out, and by some miracle, kie’s car is parked where they left it. jj digs her keys out of her pocket and slips them into her palm after she fumbles looking for them. 

kiara gets into the driver’s seat, turns the engine on and just sits there, looking blankly ahead, the radio coming on and playing the local news station that’s reporting on the tragedy. under the sudden light she looks washed out and ghostly, her eyes glazed over. she opens her mouth to say something, and then shuts it again, the motion of it robotic.

“what is it?” asks pope, folded over himself in the backseat, his seatbelt buckled in despite everything.

she laughs, sudden and inappropriate, clapping a hand over her mouth. “i don’t know where to go,” she says, in between fits of hysterical giggles. “i don’t- i don’t know where to go.” 

jj’s hand, large and bony, roughed with calluses, closes over hers where it’s clenched aroumd the steering wheel. “i got it,” he says, voice low, and she nods once, still laughing towards the edges of a panic attack. she climbs out of the driver’s seat and walks around the car to get in the backseat with pope. 

jj clambers expertly into the car, flicks on the windshield wipers and changes the radio over to the local rock station, hands still shaking but only a little bit. 

“where are you taking us?” pope asks, his head pressed against the back of the passenger seat, voice wooden. 

“anywhere but here,” jj says, and shifts the car into drive, taking them down the winding streets that were once safe and familiar. 

ii. three days after

kiara thinks it’s probably somewhat sacreligous for them to be holed up in john b’s house, but it’s not as if there’s anywhere else for them to go. besides, the four of them spent so much time in this place over the years that it’s as familiar to her as her childhood bedroom, every squeak in the floorboard and pile of clutter worn easy into the grooves of her memory. in some perverse way it only seems fair for them to come here now that everything else has fallen apart. at least there’s this: a house with beer in the fridge and saltwater stained books, motheaten comforters to curl up in when the storm nights get cold. a place that remains steady when everything else has gone off the cliff. 

the first night they had just crashed on the pullout couch, all three of them folded against one another like much younger children, shivering in their soaked clothes. the t.v had been playing a rerun of _jeopardy_ and they had curled up on the couch without even bothering to find pillows or blankets, wrung out by the weight of tragedy. nobody really slept, just stumbled in and out of nightmares for hours, the storm still crashing all around them. 

the shock is starting to wear off, now. the three of them had to give their statements to the police. jj had spent four hours down at the station, pleading the truth about what happened until his voice ran ragged. money greases the wheels of justice and it’s already spread around the island that the cameron family is leaving town right after the funeral, a case gone cold in the wake of their deaths. when they got back from the station jj had smashed his fist into the old door outside and kiara spent three hours prying the splinters of wood out of his knuckles with a pair of rusty tweezers. 

iii. two weeks after

their temporary arrangement has fallen somehow into an uneasy routine. pope had one final blowout fight with his parents and in the end turned back up at john b’s house with a duffel bag full of his clothes and an expression on his face that hurt to look at. kiara pleaded the excuse of time to heal, and her parents reluctantly acquiesced, and as far as anybody knows jj’s dad hasn’t even bothered to even come looking for him. 

“sarah’s funeral is today,” kiara says one morning, breaking the silence that tends to fall heavy over them. 

“yeah, and?” pope says, combative, sitting at the kitchen table and looking at the same puzzle he’s had sitting there for six days. “what are we supposed to do about it?”

kiara rolls her eyes, some hint of the old spark still there. “we’re supposed to _go,_ dumbass,” she says, exasperated. “to show our respects?” 

jj is perched up on the kitchen counter and smoking a cigarette, hair unwashed and his face sallow. there’s dark bruising around his eyes, purples and greens that give him the look of being wrung by something from the inside out. “are you sure we’re even allowed?” he asks, boggarting a mouthful of smoke. 

“i talked to wheezie, sarah’s sister,” kiara says, a note of finality to her voice. “she asked us to come.”

pope sighs and knocks a couple of puzzle pieces off of the table. “i just want to say on the record that i think this is a bad idea,” he says, and then gets up to go change. 

the service is large and beautiful, floral arrangements everywhere and giving off the heady, rotting sweet smell of the hydrangeas that bloom all over the island. ward looks like he’s gone to hell and part way back, and rose is stiff and bloated in her dress, lipstick two shades too dark for her. 

the three of them shuffle awkwardly into the processional line, underdressed and noticeably shabby looking, pogues for life. topher is in line with them, eyes red ringed and something about him that looks very young. 

they approach, and for some reason _rafe_ is in the greeting line, looking sweaty and pale in his polo shirt, strung out. kiara grinds her teeth, and she can feel when pope tenses up beside her, both of them remembering the blood that seeped out of his mouth, the rope that hooked around his fragile neck. 

“who the fuck let the trash in?” rafe says, much too loudly, drawing notice. ward’s face tenses, about to go on damage control, but jj smashes his fist into rafe’s eye before he gets the chance, the empty casket standing dark in front of all of them. 

iv. one month after. 

kiara is wearing one of john b’s t-shirts and nothing else, padding around the kitchen in bare feet as she pours a bowl of stale cheerios, no milk. it's the new sort of normal that they live in now. mostly they just spend a lot of time getting stoned on the couch and watching reruns of _the price is right!_ before the cable inevitably gets shut off, living off pickles scrounged from the fridge and the occasional greasy burger from the palace down the street. 

it’s a fragile peace built on the things that they don’t talk about, a list that includes: what happened to john b and sarah, the lost gold, the good old days when they were nothing more than best friends, the night terrors that wake kiara up screaming every night, jj chain smoking two packs a day of shitty menthols, the fact that pope can’t keep any food down without throwing it back up, the pogues. all of it taboo, a reminder of the still-raw wounds. 

“yo,” kiara says, flopping down onto the floor to watch as pope accidentally swallows some truly filthy bong water. “let’s get drunk.”

“it’s ten in the morning,” jj says, mock serious. pope and kiara exchange a glance, and his face breaks into a sharp grin, all teeth. “i’m kidding, assholes,” he says. “things haven’t changed that much. i know where the vodka is.”

it’s not much of a party, nothing like the keggers they used to throw down on the beach when they were young and salt drenched and invincible, but kiara puts on the music and pope mixes them poor man’s vodka cranberries and they take shots and spill out into the backyard, the midmorning light promising that the summer’s almost run its course, the fall is nearly upon them. 

they all drink fast, too fast, and by noon they’ve skidded past silly drunk and are well on their way to wasted. pope throws up in a bush, jj roughly patting his back, and kiara is flopped out on the lawn, the dead grass scratching at the back of her neck. her brain feels disconnected from the rest of her body, mouth running before she can stop it. 

“drowning’s supposed to hurt, right?” she asks, slurring her speech. “they suffered, didn’t they? it must have hurt. they must have been so scared.”

“shut the fuck up, kiara,” jj snaps, voice serious. he’s always been able to handle his booze better than the rest of them. “you don’t know what we’re talking about.” 

she sits up on her knees and spins around to face them, hands flung out to keep her balance. “no!” she says, and she can tears in the back of her throat. “no, this is fucked! what we are doing is fucked up! john b is _dead,_ his corpse is floating around at the bottom of the fucking ocean, and we’re-” she waves a wild arm around, trying to make her point. “we’re just living in this haunted fucking house! acting like he’s coming back! well, news flash, assholes! he’s _not coming back!”_

jj springs forward, also unsteady, and claps a palm over her mouth. kiara bites down on his hand in a kneejerk reaction, and then jj’s blood is metallic as dirty pennies in her mouth and there are tears streaming down her face and she can’t _handle_ this anymore, it’s all too much and too terrifying and she wants to go back in time more than anything else in the world. fuck the gold and fuck the adventure, all she wants is to be drinking a lukewarm beer and feeling the boat shifting under her feet, her boys sprawled out around her and making dirty jokes about fishing. 

her face is pressed in pope’s unwashed t-shirt, and she can feel pope and jj’s arms around her, the weight familiar. she’s still crying, and she can feel pope’s tears running hot and salty down the back of her arm, jj’s breath shuddery when he tries to exhale. it’s the most honest any of them have been in a long time. 

v. six weeks after

they have a makeshift funeral for john b on what would have been his seventeenth birthday. the pogue is still running, and they take her out as soon as they sun has started to set, the world still and peaceful around them. september has been hot and dry, and the night air is warm and familiar, the view shockingly beautiful, a mess of pinks and reds and golds. for a moment, it’s impossible to believe that anything bad has happened in this place. 

pope made the tiny raft, a picture of john b tacked on the front and a little candle. there’s no sound but the waves lapping at the boat, and jj flicks his shitty old zippo and lights up the candle, lowering it gently into the sea. kie cracks open the beers and passed them around, like slipping into a memory.

“to john b,” she says, and the boys echo her as they clink their glasses, tipping their heads back to drink. 

“god, do you remember when we were thirteen and convinced we could give one another prison tattoos?” jj says suddenly, voice only cracking a little. “i had a blob on my left ankle for like, half a year.”

“that wasn’t as bad as the time you and john b tried to superglue mrs. bramley down in her seat!” pope says, and then they cannot help but reminisce, bringing up all the sad and funny and tragic memories. 

setting off firecrackers in neighbor’s backyard. trying to stiff the ice cream man a whole five dollars. spending long days fishing. eating stranger’s sympathy food on the kitchen floor after big john went missing. all the inside jokes and all the stupid fights. the time jj took a swing at john b over some girl they both wanted to ask to the dance and didn’t have the balls to. an entire adolescence spent in one another’s back pockets and dreaming one another’s dreams. when you grow up with someone like that, secrets aren’t really secrets at all. 

“fuck,” kiara says, looking out at the tiny bobbing flame as it disappears in the distance. “john b, you little prick, i hope you’re happy out there somewhere.”

jj hooks an arm around her neck and pulls her in, doing the same with pope on the other side, and they watch as the funeral pyre goes out to sea, taking some of the grief out with it. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time writing for this fandom, so i would love to hear your thoughts!! thank you so much for reading, and feel free to reach out on tumblr @flwrpotts!


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